Important Books & Reports

Glyphosate/Roundup, falsely claimed by Monsanto to be safe and harmless, has become the world’s most widely and pervasively used herbicide; it has brought rising tides of birth defects, cancers, fatal kidney disease, sterility, and dozens of other illnesses - more

Ban GMOs Now - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Dr. Eva Sirinathsinghji

Health & environmental hazards
especially in the light of the new genetics - more

Living Rainbow H2O - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

A unique synthesis of the latest findings in the quantum physics and chemistry of water that tells you why water is the “means, medium, and message of life” - more

The Rainbow and the Worm - the Physics of Organisms - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

“Probably the Most Important Book for the Coming Scientific Revolution” - more

How to Increase the Brain Power & Health of a Nation

A new report on intelligence from the American Psychological
Association (APA) states [1]: “A large number of interventions have been shown
to have substantial effects on IQ and academic achievement.”

The collapse of the genetic
paradigm (see [2] No
Genes for Intelligence, SiS 53) should convince us to redouble
all efforts at appropriate interventions to improve the intellectual prowess of
the nation and deliver substantial health bonuses. Let’s look at some of the
options.

Education & enrichment programmes

There is clear evidence that schooling affects intelligence,
as reviewed in the APA report [1]. Children deprived of school for an extended
period of time show IQ deficits as much as 2 SDs (standard deviations). A child
entering fifth grade approximately a year earlier than one nearly the same age
(who enters fourth grade) will have a verbal IQ more than 5 points higher at
the end of the school year, and as much as 9 % higher by the eighth grade.

Children lose IQ and academic
skills over the summer and the loss is much greater for children of lower
socioeconomic status (SES). The knowledge and skills of children in the upper
fifth of family SES, however, actually increase over the summer. This
effect is so marked that by late elementary school, much of the difference in
academic skills between lower and higher SES children may be due to the loss of
skills over the summer for lower SES children as opposed to the gains for
higher SES children. Intervention over the summer months targeted at low SES
children should narrow this gap. The beneficial effects of schooling apparently
continue at least through junior high school.

The best prekindergarten interventions for
lower SES children have substantial effects on IQ, but this typically fades by
late elementary school, perhaps because the environment of the children do not
remain enriched. Two examples in which early gains from prekindergarten
intervention remained both placed children in average or above-average
elementary schools. Children in the Milwaukee Project had an average IQ 10
points above controls at adolescence; and children in the intensive Alecedarian
program had IQs 4.5 points higher than controls at 21 years of age. Regardless
of whether high quality interventions have sustained IQ effects, the effects on
academic achievement and life outcomes can be very substantial. The gains are
particularly marked for intensive interventions such as the Perry School
Project and Abecedarian program. By adulthood, individuals who had participated
were about half as likely to have repeated a grade in school or to have been
assigned to special education classes, and were far more likely to have
completed high school, attended college, and to own their own home. This
suggests that some of the effects are produced by gains in attention,
self-control, and perseverance than IQ.

Self-control and discipline, along with
creativity and flexibility are considered the key qualities to success in life,
and can be targeted by specific interventions as described in a recent review [3].
For example, martial arts that emphasize self-control, discipline and character
development such as tae-kwon-do gave children substantial gains in those
cognitive functions (referred to as ‘executive functions’), much more so than
standard physical education. The children participating in tae-kwon-do also
improved more when tested on mental mathematics. Other effective interventions
include ‘mindfulness’ practices that focus one’s complete attention on present
experience, and Tools of the Mind that develop social and socializing skills
through play.

The quality of teaching in
kindergarten has a measurable impact on academic success and life outcomes [1].
Data from Project STAR in Tennessee showed that students randomly assigned to
small kindergarten classrooms were more likely to subsequently attend college,
attend a high ranked college, and have better life outcomes in a number of
respects. Students who had more experienced teachers had higher earnings as
adults, as did students for whom the quality of teaching - as measured by test
scores - was higher.

Memory training for fluid intelligence

It is perhaps not surprising that training people in working
memory skills can enhance fluid intelligence, while having no effect on
crystallized intelligence [1]. This applies to both adults and children with
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Working memory training of low
SES children using a variety of computer and non-computer games resulted in IQ
gains of 10 points on a matrix reasoning task.

Similar memory training over an 8-month
period was effective for elderly participants [1]. Training older adults in
memory, speed in processing, and particular narrow reasoning skills produces
substantial improvements that remain over a period of years. A study in the UK
showed that an extra year of work was associated with a delay in the onset of
Alzheimer’s disease on average by six weeks.

The overriding importance of early nutrition

The overriding importance of early nutrition for learning is
highlighted in a comprehensive resource list for professionals provided by the Food
and Nutrition Information Center of US Department of Agriculture’s National
Agricultural Library [4]. It gives clear evidence that nutritional intervention
in elementary school can improve both health and academic performance.

Retrospective analyses were conducted
on school performance indicators associated with the implementation of the
Healthy Kids, Smart Kids programme, a grass-roots effort to enhance school food
and physical activity environment in Browns Mill Elementary School, Georgia. Data
from 1995 to 2006 showed that the number of nurse, counselling and disciplinary
referrals per 100 students followed a downward trend, while standardized test
scores followed an upward trend beginning in the year of programme
implementation.

A second study demonstrated the
effect of a two-year obesity prevention programme on body mass index (BMI) and
academic performance in low-income elementary schoolchildren. There were 4
intervention schools and one control school totalling 4 588 school children, 48
% Hispanic. The data were presented for the subset (1 197) of the children (68
% Hispanic) who qualified for free or reduced-price school lunches. The results
showed that significantly more intervention than control children stayed within
normal BMI range for both years. Although not significantly so, more obese
children in the intervention than in the control decreased their BMI. Overall,
intervention children had significantly higher maths scores in both years, and
Hispanic and White intervention children were significantly more likely to have
higher maths scores. Although not significantly so, intervention children had
higher reading scores in both years.

The association between
intelligence and diet at 3.5 and 7 years of age was examined in more than 500
children of European descent in Auckland New Zealand, approximately half of
them with low birth weight (≤10th percentile) [5]. The
relationship between IQ and diet measured by food frequency was investigated
using multiple regression analysis. There was no significant difference in IQ
between children with low birth weight and normal birth weight at 3.5 and 7
years of age, and no differences in food frequencies.

Eating margarine at least daily
was associated with significantly lower IQ scores at 3.5 years in the total
sample, and at 7 years in children with low birth weight. After controlling for
potential confounders, children who ate margarine daily scored 2.81 points
lower than children who did not. In all children, eating the recommended daily
number of breads and cereals – 4 or more times - was associated with
significantly higher IQ scores at 3.5 years; the gain was 3.96 points after
controlling for potential confounders. Children who ate fish at least weekly
had significantly higher IQ scores at 7 years than those who did not, a gain of
3.64 points after controlling for confounders.

Eating fish does make you smart, it
appears, precisely as we have been told in the traditional folklore of many
cultures. A large study was carried out in Sweden to evaluate the association
between fish intake and academic grades of 9 488 adolescents using multiple
linear regression models and adjusting for potential confounders such as
parents’ education [6]. The results showed that grades were higher by 14.5
points in adolescents who ate fish once a week compared with those eating fish
less than once a week. Adolescents who ate fish more than once a week scored
even higher by 19.9 points. In the model stratified for parents’ education, there
were still higher grades among children with frequent fish intake in all
educational strata.

A review published in 2008 [7]
summarized evidence indicating that food insecurity is a prevalent risk to the
growth, health, cognitive ability, and behaviour of poor children in the United
States. Infants and toddlers in particular are at risk even at the lowest level
of food insecurity. The data indicate an “Invisible epidemic” of a serious
condition.

The effect of nutritional status
on brain development and scholastic achievement was examined in 96 high school
graduates selected from the public and private schools in the richest and
poorest counties of Chile’s Metropolitan region [8]. These graduates had no
history of alcoholism, or symptoms of brain damage, epilepsy or heart disease,
and whose mothers had no history of smoking, alcoholism or drug intake before and
during pregnancy (all known to affect foetal development). The object was to
have a healthy balanced sample in terms of low and high IQ, sex, and socioeconomic
status (SES). The results showed that independently of SES, high school
graduates with similar IQ have similar nutritional, brain development and
scholastic achievement. Multiple regression analysis revealed that maternal IQ (p
< 0.0001), brain volume (p < 0.0387) and severe under-nutrition during
the first year of life (p < 0. 0486), were the independent variables with
the greatest explanatory power for the IQ variance, without interaction with
age, sex or SES. IQ (p < 0.0001) was the only independent variable that
explained both scholastic achievement variance and academic aptitude test
variance, without interaction with age, sex or SES.

Studies by the Institute of Nutrition
of Central America and Panama (INCAP) showed that supplementary feeding of
infants and young children - with drinks that provide energy only or with added
protein, both containing micronutrients - resulted in significant increases in
cognitive development and school performance through to adolescence [9]. The
research also suggested that the link of malnutrition to later development is
not only through the neurological system, but also through changes in behaviour
that affect the kinds of care the individual child receives.

A longitudinal two-year study on
school children in rural Kenya found significant relationships on regression
analyses between available Fe, available Zn, vitamin B12 and riboflavin with
improved cognitive test scores, after controlling for confounders such as
energy intake, school, socioeconomic status and illness [10].

Interventions aimed at
eliminating food insecurity and micronutrient deficiencies are easily within
the means of all developed nations, and should be given top priority in both
developed and developing nations.

Exercise increases brain power by making more neurons

A sedentary lifestyle is associated with increased risk for
cardiovascular and metabolic diseases as well as cancer, and it is well-known
that exercise can reduce the incidence of diabetes, cancers and heart disease.
Less well-known is the beneficial effects of exercise for the brain, described
in a comprehensive review [11]. In humans and rodents, physical activity
enhances cognitive functions and counteracts age-related decline of memory,
delays the onset of neurodegenerative diseases enhances recovery from brain
injury and depression.

A meta-analysis of a large number
of studies on older adults has shown that aerobic exercise, at least for the
elderly, is very important for maintaining IQ, especially for executive
functions such as planning, inhibition, and scheduling of mental procedures
[12]. The effect of aerobic exercise is more than o.5 SD for the elderly, more
for those past age 65 than those younger. It is possible to begin
cardiovascular exercise as late as the seventh decade of life and substantially
reduce the likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease.

But exactly how does exercise
work to increase brain power and help prevent degeneration? The most likely
answer appears to be through neurogenesis, the ability of the brain to repair
and renew itself by making new neurons [11].

Not long ago, neurobiologists and
the general public believed that we were born with the neurons we would have in
life, and no new neurons would ever be generated in the brain. That dogma was
overturned in the 1990s. New neurons are continually generated throughout
adulthood, mainly in two regions of the brain: the dentate gyrus in the
hippocampus, a paired brain structure involved in memory, learning and emotion,
and the subventricular zone, a layer of cells found along the brain’s lateral
ventricles. The newly generated neurons form synapses and integrate into
existing neuronal circuits.

Laboratory experiments have
revealed that exercise not only significantly increases the number of new
neurons in rats and mice, it also influences the morphology of individual newly
generated cells and enhances their maturation, and is associated with increased
plasticity in the hippocampus in forming synapses, thereby influencing learning
and memory. In rodents, both voluntary wheel running and forced treadmill
training have been shown to improve spatial learning with different types of
mazes and training.

In rodents as well as non-human
primates, aging is associated with decline in neurogenesis and cognitive
functions. The age-dependent reduction in neurogenesis can be partially
prevented when animals are housed with a running wheel over a 6-month period.
Furthermore, the decline in neurogenesis and cognitive functions associated
with normal aging can be reversed in part by wheel-running. Mice that had been
sedentary for 18 months were started on the running wheel for one month, after
which they showed significant improvements in spatial memory in learning the
water maize, and the survival of newly generated neurons was also increased to
the level of young sedentary controls.

Correlation between neurogenesis
and exercise was first established in mice through MRI measurements of
angiogenesis (blood volume) [13]. Among all hippocampus subregions, exercise
was found to have a primary effect on the dentate gyrus cerebral blood volume
(CBV), the dentate gyrus was only subregion known to support adult
neurogenesis. Moreover, exercise-induced increases in dentate gyrus CBV were
found to correlate with postmortem measurements of neurogenesis. Using similar
MRI technologies, CBV maps were generated over time in the hippocampus of
exercising humans. As in mice, exercise was found to have a primary effect on
dentate gyrus CBV, and the CBV changes were found to selectively correlate with
cardiopulmonary and cognitive function.

Another significant effect of
exercise is an increase of brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) in the hippocampus, which supports the
survival of existing neurons and encourages the growth and differentiation of
new neurons and synapses ([14, 15]). The levels of hippocampal BDNF are
significantly higher in wheel-running as opposed to sedentary rodents after 5
days, and correlates with the level of activity. There is also 3.1 fold as many
new neurons in the dentate gyrus of running compared
to sedentary mice.

Most intriguingly, running also
increases retrotransposon activity, reflected in the number of new insertions
of long interspersed nucleotide elements (LINEs-1, of L1) in the hippocampus,
and also activates silenced L1 insertions in other non-neurogenic brain regions
[16]. Such regulated ‘natural genetic engineering’ processes are now found to
be particularly active in the brain, and are strongly associated with normal
brain function [15] (see also [17] Rewriting the Genetic
Text in Human Brain Development, SiS 41).

The correlations between BDNF,
neurogenesis, and L1 insertions are presented in Figure 1 [15].

To conclude

There is now overwhelming evidence that perinatal nutrition,
education and enrichment programmes, and physical exercise are all highly
effective in improving brain function, as well as health and well-being, and
for all age groups. For far too long, our policy-makers have been misled and
misinformed into believing that intellectual ability and health are largely
determined by the genes, and hence social and environmental interventions would
have little or no effect. This pernicious genetic determinist ideology has now been
definitively and thoroughly refuted by a convergence of findings in molecular
genomics and biometrical genetics (see [2, 18] Mystery
of Missing Heritability Solved?SiS 53). It is our
responsibility to take immediate action in all the appropriate remedial and proactive
interventions to safeguard the physical and mental health and well-being of the
nation for the present and future generations.

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Todd Millions Comment left 2nd February 2012 22:10:11Some of the more mage observers when I was a child had noticed that-infants copy parents too the extent that the most important determnite for a childs literacy was;The kid seeing their parents reading.The unstated follow through of course would be a supply of good picture based books,with simple clear text for them to copy this behaviour with.
I'm unsure how the "smart"phones change this-social media is particularly alarming too me on this point-amoung all the others.
Before it was the inexplicable -"read too your child approach"in vogue,rather than a read with child.
One thing,on the variable test score point-The basic game theory for any timed exan(work it or multiple choice)-is (as I worked it out,age 9.),do the questions you get FIRST,star the ones you can get,with some figuring;and check mark the ones that you may or may not be able too work out.Awnser in that priority.
You would be suprised how much this can bump up an IQ too those who haven't figured it out.A raised in cold war peace divident I suppose.
Now-after my must do in strict sequence steam engineer training(heat content),if I try too use this approach-I have an small attack that I'm NOT doing it step by step.So my score suffers.But my actual ability is the same.